


The Honey Glow

by bewize



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:42:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewize/pseuds/bewize
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sergeant Calhoun's always knew that she had loved Dr. Brad Scott.  It took the Honey Glow to convince her that she loved anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Honey Glow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leaper182](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaper182/gifts).



All of the military programming Tamora Calhoun had in her code didn’t prepare her for being considered a hero. Ironic really, considering the game that claimed her as a character. Of course, there was a difference between life in the game and her _own_ life. Visits to Tappers to blow off steam when the arcade closed had become almost as stressful as her day job. Honestly, she probably wouldn’t have gone for a while after the whole Candy Madness except for the fact that the Surge Protectors had tripled security on _Hero’s Duty_ , hoping to prevent another Cy-Bug escape and no non-authorized personnel were allowed into the game.

Still, the way that all conversation ceased and all eyes turned to her every time she went into the Root Beer Bar made the Sergeant wish she could spend her off hours cleaning her weapons and barking at the soldiers under her to keep their kit clean. 

Lifting the mug someone had sent to her with a note and a leer, Tamora pointedly ignored the towering muscle man in the tiny leotard trying to catch her eye and glared into the foam that bubbled over the edge of her beverage.

“Calhoun.” The gruff voice of Ralph startled her from her thoughts and she grunted. 

“Wreck-It.”

“You can call me Ralph,” Ralph sighed, already knowing this argument was going to be lost. “Wreck-It is more of a nickname.”

“Accurate, though.” Tamora hid a grin by taking a drink. “You here by yourself tonight?”

“Nah,” Ralph answered, his voice as deceptively bland as hers had been. “Felix should be here in a minute. He had to go and polish his medals.”

Tamora grunted. “What’s with your medal fetish, Wreck-It?”

“I don’t…” Ralph spluttered, before taking a deep breath and pushing his hand through his hair. “I just don’t think that you have to have a medal to be a good guy. And having a medal, or fifty, doesn’t make you somehow better than the rest of us. I mean, you’re a hero and you don’t have a medal.”

“No,” Tamora said thoughtfully. “I don’t have much use for medals. Putting a metal weight around my neck seems a lot like hobbling a thoroughbred.”

Ralph blinked at her. “Umm, yeah, sure. But Felix, you know, he isn’t like that – hobbled, I mean. He’s just… a nice guy. Even if he is a bit oblivious sometimes. I just wanted people to look at me more like they look at him.”

Tamora snorted. “Never gonna happen, Wreck-It. Felix has something you don’t.”

For a second Ralph looked hurt, then his expression faded to anger. “What’s that?”

“An unrealistic belief that everyone is better than they are.” Tamora turned as the subject of their conversation bounced through the door and wondered for a minute if Felix bounced everywhere. She and Ralph drank in companionable silence for a moment as Felix deftly worked his way through the crowd, offering a handshake here and a hug there, and a kind word everywhere he stopped. The citizens of the arcade, who had been afraid and unwilling to approach either the infamously short tempered Ralph or the sharp tongued Sergeant had no such hesitations when it came to offering effusive thanks to the cheerful handyman.

“You know,” Ralph said after he finished his root beer. “You could do worse.”

Tamora gave him a sharp look, but when she finally decided that he meant it innocently enough, she nodded. “You certainly could.”

************************

“You were sloppy, McGarrity!” Tamora bellowed at one of the soldiers, her soldiers, glaring down at him as he regenerated from his position prone on the ground.

“It doesn’t matter, Sarge,” McGarrity griped, his face contorted as his code struggled to rewrite himself. “I’ll regenerate.”

“Every time you die, McGarrity, you risk something not working right when you come back. You’re not the brightest pixel in the screen as it is. And defeatism is about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane. Don’t get caught not looking!”

“Aww, Sarge. You care!” The comment came from somewhere behind Tamora and she spun around, eyes narrowing as she searched for whichever of her men had found a sense of humor in the wasteland that surrounded them in _Hero’s Duty_. “Getting soft, or just getting lucky?”

The last comment carried a hiccup at the end that gave away the speaker and Tamora marched down Maxwell like a firing squad, ending her stalk with a sharp swing of her helmet into his chest. “The question isn’t whether I’m getting lucky, Maxwell. It’s how lucky are you feeling right now? You got it in your code to be froggy? Go on and jump.”

The rest of the men fell silent, forming a semi-circle around the two of them, but Tamora ignored them. She almost remembered Maxwell from a bootcamp that had never happened and she knew that he’d back down now that she’d cornered him. Predictably, he dropped his gaze. “Sorry, Seargent. I’m out of line. If you say that the _handyman_ is a good guy, then…”

“He’s a better man than you’ll ever be, Maxwell. He risked everything for someone other than himself. For his friends. You think you got guts like that, Maxwell? You die in here, you got nothing worse than coming back as scrambled as McGarrity to worry about. You die in Sugar Rush? Well, game over.”

Maxwell didn’t look up from the ground and Tamora finally took a little pity on him and moved on. “Let’s get back to work, ladies! Since everyone wants to sit around and discuss our love lives, we’ve got time to run formations. Line ‘em up!”

Groans followed her announcement from all directions, but Tamora didn’t care. The men had something to occupy them for a while and that gave her time to figure out why Maxwell’s crude comment had only offended her on behalf of the tiny handyman.

************************

“Thank you very much, ma’am,” Felix had his hat in his hand as he stopped at the entrance to _Hero’s Duty_. “It was truly a pleasure to spend the evening with you.”

Much to her own chagrin, Tamora found herself nonplussed at Felix’s manners – again. “I swear Fix-It, if you don’t stop calling me ma’am, I’m gonna give you a beating like your mama used to.”

Felix’s mouth dropped open in surprise, then after a minute, his lips quirked up. “I’m not sure if I should apologize, or just say yes, ma’am.”

Tamora laughed. She couldn’t help herself and she bent down to claim a good night kiss. “You sure you’re from a K-rated game, Fix-It?”

“Oh, absolutely. I do apologize for being so forward, but when it comes to you, I cannot help myself. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known, Tamora.”

Startled again – something that she was beginning to get used to when it came to the handyman – Tamora started to straighten up and away, but Felix stopped her with a gentle hand to her cheek. This time he kissed her and it made her toes tingle. “I’ll tell you a secret,” Felix said softly when he pulled away to breathe. “I’m pretty sure that someone wrote a bit of adult code into my system as a joke.”

“Right,” Tamora breathed, still so shaken from the kiss that she couldn’t think of anything witty to say. “As a joke.”

“I know about your husband,” Felix whispered, tightening his grip when she instinctively jerked away. “I’m sorry.”

“What does that have to do with the price of candy in Sugar Rush?” Tamora snapped, hiding the wave of panic she felt behind the familiarity of anger.

Felix let her go, unwilling to force her to stay. “I know you loved him. I know he was a good man. I just hope that someday you might be able to love me, too. I have been in love with you since the moment you first pinned me to the ground.”

For the third time in the last few minutes, Tamora felt the ground sway under her feet and she had no idea what to say. Finally, she cleared her throat. “You’re surprisingly kinky, handyman.”

Felix smiled. “You know what you know when you know you know it.”

************************

Tamora wasn’t completely surprised to see her men warm up to Felix. He had a straightforward charm and a certain undeniable bravery that won over everyone that he met, given enough time. It became tradition to head to Tappers as soon as the arcade closed, and even though she and Felix always sat at a private table, they were never alone for long.

At first, the only person brazen enough to interrupt their dates was Ralph, but the big man’s brashness was contagious. Eventually, all of her men felt free to come up and crack jokes with the handyman.

Felix gave as good as he got, in his own way. Where her soldiers were brash, he was always polite, but when it came down to it, Felix never backed away. It took awhile, but eventually he was given the same amount of respect she was by her men. 

“You’re a strange man, Fix-It,” Tamora said one night as he walked her back to her game. “I’m a trained marine. I could kill a man with a napkin, and yet you always insist on walking me home.”

“I’m a gentleman, Tamora. It’s in my code. And a gentleman never lets a lady walk home unescorted.”

“It’s one of the reasons I love you, actually.” Tamora stopped short, pulled to a halt by the pressure on her arm, her hand fixed in Felix’s vice-grip. She didn’t even turn around, instead breaking into a smile that she would deny having until the day that her game went out of business. “You heard me, Fix-It. I love you.”

“How do you know?” he asked, sounding slightly strangled.

“Because,” Tamora turned around to meet his eyes, dropping to her knees so that she was at his height. “You give me the honey glow something fierce.”

It turned out that Felix did have some adult code written into programming somewhere. And it was no joke.


End file.
